May 25th, 2021, marked the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. George Floyd was a victim of racial injustice. Tragically, he is not the only Black person to die at the hands of U.S. police officers over these past few years. George Floyd&#…
“As a professional woman who most identifies as a physician more than any other title, I know that I run the risk of losing myself to this disease. I am not ignorant to the risk. I understand that my identity is supposed to be separate from my …
This has been a very difficult year. COVID-19 has rampaged the country, worked hospitals to their breaking point, torn families apart, and kept families apart. The grief seems never-ending. At the beginning of 2020, we watched in horror at the destruct…
Everyone loved Mrs. Maria. She was everyone’s mom, grandma, teacher. Maria grew up in poverty. Though her family was poor, she knew her parents and siblings loved her and loved each other. But the one thing she knew her passion was at was school. Every…
When the pediatrician woke me at midnight to get a blood test from my three-month-old son, I knew things were serious. I should have known this already. Four weeks prior, my four-year-old daughter passed along a respiratory virus to my husband, me, and…
I fear that I’m not doing the right thing. You’re trusting me with your life. I hear you telling me that you don’t want me to do what I am about to do. I see it in your eyes, the resentment as you look toward your family. And hatred for me, your physic…
The thing I think would surprise people the most is my relationship with death. I’m a critical care anesthesiologist. It’s an exciting, rewarding field – I tell my medical students and residents that it blends expertise in the human body with mastery o…
Medicine is an art. One can learn about symptoms, diagnostics, and treatment plans for various diseases, from textbooks and journal articles. It is harder to study empathy, compassion, and human connection from conventional academic resources. The art …
“Being a neonatologist and a mother is living with the knowledge that the question ‘What would you do?’ could so easily become real, not hypothetical. And so what would I do? I don’t know, heartbroken mama. Because I feel too much, b…
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” – George Orwell The “difficult” family At 2 a.m., on my first night shift as a pediatric resident, a patient, Casey, transferred from another hospital. She had a rare, p…
